


Before a Million Universes

by BeatriceandBenedict



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Mild Language, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Oblivious Bucky, Oblivious Steve, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Some angst, Steve and Bucky have communication issues, Steve gets sent to an alternate universe, and AU Steve gets sent to the canon compliant universe, everyone lives in the tower, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-18 20:51:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7330201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeatriceandBenedict/pseuds/BeatriceandBenedict
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A burst of white light flooded the room down the hallway, and normally Bucky wouldn’t care. Their lives were so insane at this point, a random bright white light didn’t even register, didn’t even make the top five weirdest things to happen this week. But instead of the usual, resigned what now? Bucky usually felt whenever something weird happened, he was seized with pure terror because Steve—reckless, stupid Steve Rogers—had just run into the room that was now spewing white light and an ominous ringing sound.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before a Million Universes

A burst of white light flooded the room down the hallway, and normally Bucky wouldn’t care. Their lives were so insane at this point, a random bright white light didn’t even register, didn’t even make the top five weirdest things to happen this week. But instead of the usual, resigned _what now?_ Bucky usually felt whenever something weird happened, he was seized with pure terror because Steve—reckless, stupid Steve Rogers—had just run into the room that was now spewing white light and an ominous ringing sound. 

Tony let out a string of impressive curses, which snapped Bucky from his panicked stupor. The battle was still raging around him, and he easily took down the foolish AIM agent who thought he could take advantage of the Winter Soldier’s momentary distraction. 

“Steve?” Bucky demanded over the roar of gunfire, hoping the idiot still had the use of his comms. “Steve, you copy? Steve?”

Nothing. Dammit. 

“Stark, what’s going on?” At least Natasha was keeping her head straight, and managing to take out three AIM agents at the same time. Bucky was dangerously close to losing it. 

“Working on it,” Tony shot back, voice strained. “This isn’t exactly a grade school science fair project.”

This whole mission was stupid, Bucky decided as he tore his way through AIM soldiers towards the room where Steve disappeared. They should’ve just left it to SHIELD, in his opinion. But no, they needed Tony’s expertise for whatever high tech machine just fucking ate Stevie.

“That suspicious light is gone,” Barton updated them from his perch. “Still no sign of Cap.”

“I’m going in,” Bucky announced, ignoring Natasha’s protests. She could suck it, there’s no way he’s just going to leave Steve after—after whatever just happened. 

He incapacitated the last agent, shouldering his way into the room a bit more forcefully than necessary. Crates filled the space, obstructing his view, because of course it wouldn’t be easy to just find Steve and get out. Bucky kicked one in frustration. “Steve?”

No response. Again. Dammit, Steve. Why couldn’t he just stay at home, safe, like a normal person?

“Steve?” he called out again, pushing his way through the crates and scanning the room. “Steve!”

The stupid lug was lying unconscious, rudely ignoring Bucky’s attempts to wake him up. A large something, that looked like a weird street lamp but a lot scarier, towered over him. The part of Bucky’s brain not focusing on cussing Steve out for being stupid and reckless guessed it was probably the source of the white light. 

“Found Steve,” he grunted into the comms. “Unconscious, but no sign of broken bones or blood.”

“I’ve downloaded the blueprints for their machine,” Tony said. “We can torch the place and get out.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Natasha agreed. “Rendez-vous at the quinjet in ten. Barnes, you need help with Cap?”

“I’ve got him,” Bucky said, scooping Steve in his arms. He frowned. Steve was usually a pain to carry, a bulky 250 pounds of pure muscle and patriotism. The Steve in his arms now was maybe 50 or 60 pounds lighter, and the uniform didn’t cling to him the way it normally did. Not that Bucky ever noticed the way Steve’s uniform clung to him. “On our way out.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bucky paced the hospital room. Sometimes he felt like he’s spent most of his life in hospital rooms. Logically, he knew that he’s actually spent most of his life in a cryogenic chamber, but he actually had more memories of keeping Stevie company during his various illness. He wasn’t sure which was worse. 

It was eerily familiar, sitting in the uncomfortable chair next to Steve’s bed and watching the doctors run around taking tests. After a few hours of doctor talk Bucky couldn’t understand, they reported that Steve was physically healthy.

Except he didn’t have the serum anymore. 

That bit of news nearly sent Bucky into a panic attack. Natasha had to literally slap him across the face to get him to snap out of it. 

As soon as the doctors said Steve was stable and would wake up in his own time, Bucky forced himself out of the Tower to buy an inhaler and two dozen different types of allergy medicine. That was four days ago. 

There was still no word on what exactly happened. Tony was holed up in his lab with Bruce and Jane, analyzing whatever contraption had put in this stupid coma. The only reason Bucky didn’t go up there to check and see if they’d made any progress was because he’d already gotten kicked out twice for yelling at them. 

“Come on, Stevie, wake up,” Bucky mumbled, staring at Steve like that would magically wake him up. A nurse came in to check his vitals, and she smiled at him when Bucky glared venomously at her. The staff of the medical floors at the tower stopped being scared of his “murder glare” (as Clint called it) after the second day of refusing to leave Steve’s side. 

He wasn’t sure how much time passed after that, thoughts drifting from worry to irritation and back to more worry, and next thing he knew it was dark out side and the clock read 11:23 PM.

“You should get some sleep,” Natasha interrupted his thoughts. Bucky refused to startle, even though he actually hadn’t noticed her standing there. “It’s been four days. We’ll call you if he wakes up.”

“When,” Bucky corrected absentmindedly, keeping his attention on Steve. She looked like she was going to add something else, but instead gave him a sympathetic look. Bucky almost wished she’d made whatever annoying comment was probably floating around her head.

Natasha left after making several more general comments about the mess that was Bucky at the moment, which he decidedly ignored. He found that was the best way to deal with Natasha’s irritatingly accurate observations was pretending like they didn’t exist. Denial was great, who cared what his therapist said. 

A quiet moan interrupted his train of thought, making Bucky snap to attention. Steve’s eyes were fluttering open, and Bucky felt the tension of the last week melt away. 

“Oh thank God, Steve.” He quickly abandoned his chair to crowd over Steve’s bed. “Are you okay? Hurt anywhere?”

“Uh yeah, I’m fine,” Steve said, nose scrunched up like he was confused. 

“Good, you reckless piece of shit, what were you thinking?” Finally satisfied that Steve wasn’t dying or in pain, Bucky’s voice rose until he was nearly shouting. “Tony specifically said not to go near the machine, and what did you do? You run into the room with the machine like some dumbass who got all the self-preservation sucked out of him! Do you have any idea how fucking dangerous that was? We still don’t know what it did to you! Fuck, Steve, you could’ve died!” 

Bucky’s well rehearsed scolding died barely a sixth of the way in when he paused to take a breath and noticed Steve’s bewildered face. “Stevie? You okay?”

“What on earth are you talking about?” Steve asked slowly, which made Bucky worry even more. “Where are we? What the hell happened to your hair?”

“Shit.” What the fuck? Did that thing mess with his memories? Bucky didn’t think he could handle that. He could barely handle his own shitty memory. “What do you remember?”

“I don’t know, going to bed last night?” Steve shrugged in an attempt at nonchalance, but Bucky could tell he was getting antsy. “I was reading that John Adams biography but you made me turn the light off ‘cause you wanted to sleep.”

That didn’t make any sense at all. Well, the John Adams biography did, Steve was the nerdiest history nerd to ever nerd. But even if he was reading a biography (and Bucky was pretty sure Steve was in the middle of a book about modern First Ladies, not John Adams), they slept in different rooms. Why the hell would he give a shit if Steve’s light was on?

“Hey, Bucky,” Steve was saying something, and shit he should be paying attention to him. “Bucky, come here.”

Steve gestured for Bucky to lean forward, and he complied easily until there was barely two inches between their faces. Ever since his stint as the Winter Soldier, he had a tendency to follow Steve’s orders with little hesitation, although he still argued with the stupider ideas. 

“Whatever’s going on, it’ll be fine, okay?” Steve murmured reassuringly, and for a second Bucky actually felt comforted. Until Steve placed a soft kiss on his lips and Bucky’s world stopped spinning. 

“What the fuck,” Bucky said blankly, frozen in place. Half of his brain was yelling at him to lean forward and kiss the shit out of Steve, but the other half was screaming to get back because _what the fuck._

“Bucky?”

Shit, shit, shit, this was not how Bucky imagined reacting to Steve kissing him. Not that he regularly imagined Steve kissing him. But if he did happen to indulge in the occasional fantasy where Steve kissed him sweetly and said nice things like _I love you_ and _wow you’re pretty_ , he usually imagined himself responding with something smooth and suave like _love you too, baby_ or maybe even _not as pretty as your eyes_. Definitely not _what the fuck_.

“Bucky?!” And shit, now Steve was panicking and he should really say something other that _what the fuck_. But his brain wouldn’t fucking work because Steve fucking Rogers just fucking kissed him and he’s been dreaming of this moment since he was twelve years old and realized kissing wasn’t gross and now all he could think was _what the fuck_.

He was saved by Tony Stark bursting into the room, waving a StarkPad like a maniac.

“He’s from another universe, the machine swapped our Steve with another Steve from an alternate universe and now—oh hey, Steve, you’re awake.” Tony’s excited science spiel cut off when he finally caught on to the slightly panicked awkwardness choking the room. “Welcome to an alternate universe. I see you’ve already met Barnes.”

“Alternate universe?” Steve asked, and damn his voice was shaking. The last time Bucky heard Steve’s voice that shaky was at Peggy’s funeral. Steve shot a nervous look at Bucky, who smiled in a hopefully comforting way. “What do you mean?”

Tony launched into an overly dramatic technical explanation that clearly flew over Steve’s head. He looked at Bucky expectantly, like he might understand whatever was coming out of Tony’s mouth. 

“I usually just wait till he runs out of steam and ask for an English translation,” Bucky shrugged helplessly. Steve smiled in amusement, and Bucky found some of the tension he didn’t realize was there leave his shoulders. If Steve was smiling, that meant everything was going to be okay, right?

“Oh, right, I forgot not everyone speaks genius,” Tony drawled, finally noticing Steve and Bucky had stopped paying attention. Bucky rolled his eyes. “Long story short, this Steve is from an alternate universe and our Steve got swapped with him.”

“Wait, what?” Bucky frowned. “Our Steve is some alternate universe right now?”

“Well no, not some alternate universe,” Tony said. “His universe.” He nodded at the Steve in the hospital bed, whose eyes were blown wide with barely concealed panic.

“Hey now, it’s fine,” Bucky grinned bravely and clapped a hand on his shoulder, not missing the frantic, skeptical look Steve gave him. “We can fix this, right? Tony?”

“Uh,” Tony hesitated. “Probably?”

“Probably?” Steve’s voice was squeaky with hysteria, and Bucky gave Tony his most murderous murder glare. 

“I mean yeah, totally,” Tony backtracked quickly. “Jane’s going to asked Thor if he’s seen or heard anything like this on Asgard. Besides, between our combined genius, we’ll fix this, no problem.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tony left soon after, muttering something that sounded sciencey under his breath, but before he left he gave Steve permission to leave medical. In his universe he never received the super soldier serum, but because of modern medicine he was relatively healthy (the punk still had asthma, so Bucky kept the new inhaler safely in his pocket) and there was no reason to keep him there. 

“What does that mean?” Steve asked, following Bucky to the elevator. Bucky knew from experience that keeping Steve in medical for longer than necessary was going to end in disaster, so he skipped the nurse’s final check up to get Steve out. 

“What does what mean?” Bucky asked, pressing the button for their floor. 

“I only survived here ‘cause I had some sort of serum?”

“Oh,” Bucky paused. How on earth was he supposed to explain that? “When exactly were you born?”

“July 4th, 1986. Why?”

“Our Steve was born in 1918.”

Steve stopped, eyes wide, and Bucky had to push him out of the elevator onto their floor. He knew this was going to be a weird conversation, and now he had an idea why Tony had been so quick to get back to the lab.

“Wait so your universe’s me is super old?” Steve asked, finally finding his voice. “But you—how does that—what?”

“Ugh,” Bucky groaned, flopping on the couch. “Sit down, it’s a long story.”

He explained how he and Steve grew up in Brooklyn in during the early twentieth century, glossing over the grittier details about Stevie’s sicknesses and nearly starving in the Depression, and what happened in World War II. He tried to keep the anger out of his voice when he talked about Steve getting the serum and crashing the plane into the Arctic (it may have been 70 years but that didn’t make it any less stupid of a decision in his opinion) and did his best to explain how Steve survived being frozen for that long. 

His own story he kept short, giving this Steve the bare minimum needed to understand how he was still alive and only about 30 years old. 

Steve kept quiet through the whole story, but Bucky could see his mind whirling behind those blue eyes that looked exactly like his Steve’s eyes. He looked curiously at Bucky’s metal arm when Bucky explained where he got it, like that was the first time he noticed it. 

“And now we live in a Tower with a bunch of other crazy assholes and fight aliens and shit,” Bucky finished, voice scratchy after talking for close to an hour. He got up, leaving Steve on the couch, and headed for the kitchen. “You want a beer?”

“Yeah, sure,” Steve said, clearly lost in thought. Bucky didn’t blame him, some days it was a lot for him to process, and he lived through it. He tossed Steve a beer, which he caught with only a slight fumble. His reflexes weren’t as shitty as his Steve’s before the serum, Bucky noted, but not as good as after.

A couple minutes passed in silence, Bucky sipping his beer and Steve deep in thought. Bucky took the opportunity to study the man in front of him, comparing him to his Steve. This Steve was slighter, less beefy than his Steve, but still in good shape. His face was identical, and even though Bucky hadn’t had the chance to get a good look at his hands he’d bet they were the same too. He held himself in the same way that his Steve did; confidently, like he wasn’t afraid to fight anything that pissed him off. Bucky thought this Steve probably had military experience too, maybe not as intense as theirs from World War II and SHIELD, but he definitely had some training. 

“So what about you?” Bucky asked, breaking the silence. “What’s your life like if you’re not running around in the American flag with an oversized frisbee?”

“I—uh, it’s not really that cool,” Steve winced. “It’s kind of really lame compared to what you guys do here.”

“Come on, spill,” he urged with a grin, nudging Steve with his foot. “Can’t be that bad.”

“I run an art gallery in Brooklyn,” Steve said with a sheepish laugh. 

“Really?” Bucky asked, surprised. That wasn’t really what he was expecting to hear. Now that he thought about it though, running an art gallery seemed perfect for Stevie. He always did have an eye for art.

“Yeah, not really the heroics I apparently do here,” Steve chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck. His cheeks were pink, like he was embarrassed that he wasn’t throwing himself into danger every other minute. Knowing Steve, he probably was. “You’re actually the one who saves lives.”

“I am?” Bucky had almost forgotten there was an alternate universe version of him. “What do I do?”

“You’re an ER nurse,” Steve beamed proudly and Bucky nearly choked on his beer.

“Seriously?” he asked over his coughs. Him? A nurse? That was—that was—what?

“Yeah,” Steve grinned fondly, completely oblivious to Bucky’s existential crisis. “You always say that you got tons of practice looking after me when we were younger, and you might as well put it to use.”

“Huh.” Bucky stared at his hands, one metal and one flesh, and tried to imagine a universe where he used them to heal instead of hurt.

“Buck?” Steve looked concerned. 

“How’d we meet?” Bucky asked, abruptly changing the subject. Steve looked like he wanted to protest. Maybe he would’ve if it had been his Bucky. 

“Military,” he answered instead, and ha, Bucky was right. “You—he?—was my second in command. We danced around each other for months, and the minute Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was repealed, our whole unit was all over us asking when the wedding was.”

Oh. _Oh_. That explained the kiss earlier. 

“So you’ve—we’ve—fuck this is confusing. You’ve been together since then?”

“Yeah,” Steve gave him a dopey smile before his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Wait, are you not together in this universe? Is that why you freaked out earlier when I kissed you?”

“Um, no. I mean yes,” Bucky stuttered. Steve looked at him like he saw right through him, and Bucky panicked. “We, uh, don’t really do much PDA, so the kiss kind of surprised me.”

What the fuck. 

“Oh?” Steve raised his eyebrows and Bucky knew he didn’t believe him. He should just confess now, admit he was lying, and hope it wouldn’t be horribly embarrassing. 

“Yeah, back in the thirties it wasn’t really accepted so we had to keep it a secret.”

What the actual fuck. 

“But it’s not illegal anymore,” Steve pointed out, and that was a great point. He should agree and tell him the whole thing was a lie and he had just temporarily lost control of his mouth. Bucky didn’t actually have whatever this Steve had with his Bucky, he just really wanted to. 

“Old habits die hard, I guess.”

Forget everything, he should just shoot himself in his traitorous mouth that kept talking without his permission. 

“That makes sense,” Steve nodded, accepting Bucky’s frankly ridiculous lies. Bucky wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. “The others know?”

“Uh, no,” Bucky winced. Clint and Tony were going to laugh their asses off if they found out. Natasha was going to actually murder him. “Could you maybe not mention it to them?”

“Of course,” Steve said, like he wouldn’t dare break Bucky’s trust. Dammit, Steve was perfect in every universe.

“Thanks,” he muttered, leaning back into the couch. What the fuck did he just do? He just fucking lied to Steve about being in a relationship with Steve. He was going to hell, no doubt about it now.

“No problem,” Steve replied, voice faint. Bucky’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. That faint voice didn’t mean Steve was overwhelmed, that faint voice meant Steve was thinking very hard about something.

“What’re you thinkin’?” Bucky asked, finishing off his beer. Steve hummed quietly before answering. 

“You and—well I guess me, you’ve been through some shit.”

Bucky snorted. “Yeah, you could say that.”

“It’s weird,” he continued thoughtfully, taking a sip of his beer. He always took forever to finish a beer, preferring to savor it or whatever. Bucky was just happy if he didn’t chug his. “Because it’s me you’re talking about, but it’s not me.”

“Kind of, I guess,” Bucky shifted uncomfortably. “It’s pretty weird.”

“Do I act like him?” Steve asked curiously, going for nonchalance but Bucky could tell that he was asking for a reason. 

“Yeah,” he answered after a minute of thinking. “You act like him when he’s around people he doesn’t really know though. Not like he normally acts around people like me and Tony.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

A couple beats of silence passed before Steve asked another question. 

“Tony said the machine swapped me with your Steve, right?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Does that mean your Steve is with my Bucky?”

“ _Shit_.”


End file.
